The Internet is widely regarded as an unsafe place for children to be. Unscrupulous advertisers place inappropriate ads in areas that are easily accessible to children, allowing a child to navigate to a gambling site or an adult-oriented site in several clicks. With the advent and massive popularity of social networking sites, such as MySpace, younger and younger children create profiles where they post personal information and, in the worst case, end up chatting with and giving even more personal information to those who they perceive to be children when they are, in fact, adults of ill intent. While the situation does not seem to be widespread, the amount of vigilance on the part of law enforcement to catch adults posing as children points to the opposite being true. Club Penguin is an online game that is billed as a safe place for children to be when they are on the Internet. Strict child safety measures in place, the game is fun for kids and has been praised as a great way to introduce children to the Internet and social networking.

Development of Club Penguin began in 2003. The founders, Lance Priebe and Lane Merrifield, employees of New Horizon Production, saw a need for a social networking outlet that was geared toward kids. Merrifield has said that part of the motivation behind creating Club Penguin was the fact that he had tried to find safe social networking for his children, but had failed. Priebe had already been developing flash-based games prior to Club Penguin, the first of which, Experimental Penguins, surfacing in 2001. It went offline in 2001, but paved the way for his next project, Penguin Chat. The game would serve as a springboard for the Club Penguin idea, and by October 24, 2005, after two years of development and testing, Club Penguin was released. Growth was very rapid, as the 15,000 users that initially began to play Club Penguin exploded to 1.4 million by March. In several months, the figure had almost doubled to 2.6 million, and continued its meteoric rise to 3.9 million members by its two-year anniversary.

By August 2007, the company behind Club Penguin had turned down several lucrative advertising offers and venture capital investments, but that month, they agreed to sell both Club Penguin and the parent company to Disney. The price was $350 million, and the owners were promised bonuses of $350 million more if they could reach certain expectation by 2009. Merrifield has said that the sale of Club Penguin was intended to provide the funds and infrastructure needed for the game to grow, and that the move was philosophical in nature, rather than a profiteering stunt. By this time, the game had 12 million accounts, and 70,000 of which were paid subscribers, a total that would make $40 million in annual revenue. By April 2008, Club Penguin had become more international, with an office opening in the UK for local support. An Australian office is planned to be open soon.

Before Disney purchased Club Penguin, the entire revenue came from paid subscribers to the game. Although the game is essentially free, paid subscribers can take advantage of every service that the game has to offer, including the ability to purchase virtual clothes for the penguin avatars, decorations for the igloos, and different types of pets. The vast majority of Club Penguin accounts, over 90% according to one figure, are unpaid subscriptions, but the massive amount of children that play Club Penguin makes 10% a sizeable figure anyway. Advertising has not been incorporated into the Club Penguin system, much to the acceptance of adults whose children play Club Penguin because of the fact that advertisements can eventually lead to spyware or adult-oriented sites. An alternative source of revenue for the Club Penguin company is in the form of an online merchandising shop which allows children to purchase merchandise that is related to the game, such as stuffed Puffles, the small, fluffy creatures that penguins can own.

Club Penguin is an online game, which means that children who play Club Penguin are doing so in the presence of others that are also playing. The character that players control is in the form of a penguin avatar, which can then be customized by the player as he or she acquires certain items. Players can interact with each other through chat and can also play with or against each other in various mini-games to earn virtual currency. This currency can be used to purchase in-game items. The Club Penguin world is a frosty area separated into different “Rooms”, such as the Town Room in which penguin avatars can visit coffee shops and dance lounges. Other rooms contain different social environments or mini-games. Game features include emoticons, which are faces that appear above the avatar’s head expressing emotion, collectible items, and pets, which take the form of puffles.

A unique characteristic of the game is The Penguin Times, a free virtual weekly newspaper that contains news about the games and is also interactive with the players. There was also an in-game donation drive where players could submit their virtual currency to any of three charitable organizations. In conjunction with the New Horizon Foundation, Club Penguin donated $1 million dollars to three charitable causes, and the money was split according to how the virtual currency donation went. Overall, two billion virtual coins were donated, which critics of the game have cited as an extremely positive symbol of the game’s encouragement of good behavior.

Still, though, some people have criticized the game because of a perceived embracing of consumerism. Children are encouraged to acquire more virtual coins than the rest of the players due to the game’s mechanics, which some critics cite as a perfect reason for players to cheat at the game. The game has several mechanics in place to deter cheating and those who are caught cheating are banned from the game. Others have said that the games consumerist ideas only help kids to learn how to save money, how to decide what to spend it on, and how to realize the value of work in relation to earning money. Several critics of the game have pointed out that a game oriented specifically toward children is a potential breeding ground for adults that pose as children. In-game language is filtered heavily to take out bad words, creative spellings of bad words, personal information, and other things that should not be transmitted. There is also a core of several dozen game moderators, people that are paid to patrol the game and ban those involved in inappropriate behavior.

Club Penguin takes every safety measure to ensure the safety of the children that play it, and the result is a massively successful game that has proven to be very fun. The developers make it their first priority to create a game that is both entertaining and safe, while also making sure that children realize that it is only a game and that they should take breaks. As an introduction to social networking, Club Penguin is a wonderful tool, since strict chat filtering and a whimsical, kid-oriented world create an ideal environment for children to interact with others on the Internet. If you want to introduce your child to the Internet, Club Penguin is a good place to start.